I think Kathy is saying the same thing I said. Two reasons:
1. External (perceived need- local or universal)
2. Internal (inspiration, fun, exercise, prayer).

Where I was going with this thread originally wasn't "Should anyone compose?"
I think clearly the answer is Yes (besides that it can't be helped- being made in the image and likeness of God, we have a drive to create beauty).

My question was more about a specific type of composition: A cycle of Propers.
Because it seems to me that, unlike a Mass setting or a moter, a cycle of Propers (even just Introits only, or just a single season) is a PROJECT, that requires continuing work and commitment long after the initial inspiration or fun as faded. Writing a cycle of Propers (a whole Psalter, or anything like that) requires devotion and commitment. Now, you might just want to take that on for your own spiritual/musical development. But it would be nice to know what other people think about the (local or universal) need.

Adam, I concur with your rationale on the last page totally: you really do have to "count the cost" before embarking on those sorts of projects, don't you! A healthy dose of humility is also needed. I remember once for a church music class I composed this fantastic hymn tune...only to realize I that C.H.H. Parry had written it a century before! Our minds work strangely sometimes, no?

I'll vote in favor of the multitude of chant-based proper projects now. On any given week, we will use Fr. Samuel, Fr. Columba, or SEP for a Mass. The diversity of styles is wonderful. That will be further enriched by Fr. Samuel's new project (started years ago here in St. Louis) which gives three settings for each proper text ("florid", slightly more syllabic, and then a psalm tone). I think we all agree that no one person always composes perfectly to our taste, so this diversity helps us provide the best music possible to our parishes every week.

Can someone post a JPEG of what Tietze's works look like? I'd love to see one ...

Crazy that I have not, since my own Cathedral published them ...

JMO
If no one gets to it before I get home, I'll do so- I have the book at home.

I think the Tietze collection has not caught on because for a lot of reasons, not least of all its timing.
It came out years ago, before knowledge of the Propers was even as widespread as it currently is(n't).

In fact, if you read the introduction, it's sort of funny and dated: CT talks about the Propers as if they are forgotten archaeological artifacts. Not in a disrespectful "these are museum pieces" sort of way, but in a "oh my gosh, can you believe no one has heard of these?! I had to trek across Siberia and wrestle Codexes from 10th Century zombie-monks in order to find them. Quick! We need to get these Propers to safety before the Nazi-aliens storm the castle!" sort of way. Okay- not really that ridiculous, but I certainly got the sense that this was some sort of Ancient Secret that Prof. Indiana Tietze had managed to uncover.

Another reason is the "Intended Audience" problem.
If you want to do Propers, do you also want to do European Protestant-style hymns?

Jam, you said that so well!

Yes, Chuck, Jam's always had the knack. But....

That is the idea that drove the council of Trent to ossify the liturgy in such a way that the opening of the floodgates at Vatican II caused so much damage.

That is the carnival mirror image, somewhat distorted and augmented, of the companion myth that Pierluigi da P. "saved" polyphony during Trent with a miraculous hearing of the Marcelli by Tridentine bishops. (I'm going off topic and won't Wiki-check this, but wasn't St. Philip Neri a Palestrina fan?)
And that's quite a "Back to the future Delorean leap" from Trent to "Michael row the boat ashore." I am loathe to wonder if the real "deal-breaker" between compositional evolution and the church began with my man Monteverdi, the Gabrieli boys (the Venetian Young Guns) and the French like Couperin. It seems so "Grout" to not see the convergence of opera with the pageantry and pomp of spezzati and arias. And the dialectic continues for half a millenia to Verdi versus Pius X with a few notable exceptions like M. Haydn, Martini, Bruckner....
Add to that the teeny weeny little accomodations of Singmesse and New World synthesised forms, it seems that the damage was complete long before Ray Repp, Joe Wise and all those Baltimore seminarians and those sweet Canadian nuns on Ed Sullivan unleashed their geetars in church crypts.

I'm glad Heinrich Isaac and William Byrd didn't just give up because chants already existed.

wow people...

i have spent less time on this forum in the past year or so, and it is amazing to read some of these threads. this is a GOOD one! Sorry I wasn't around when the bantering was aloofing about... but here's my late take...

The church should always and everywhere be singing the chant... the GC, that is. I have been very careful not to jump into the fray of composing English chant for one very serious reason: It could distract (or at least, delay) us from the inevitable wish of Mother Church that we promote the music that deserves 'pride of place'. MCW has a very clear and concise picture on this matter:

Perhaps every age is operating under some sort of chronocentrism, and being that we are all tied to time in this earthly life that's understandable. Our immediate style is what we know, and sometimes what we think is best.

At the same time, there is more reason to be concerned with sacrality, universality, and soundness of form in our composition attempts. Our private compositions aside (I love doing this, too!) most of what we offer to our Church from ourselves needs to be a gift to all peoples and all times. A tall order, indeed. But I believe love and obedience mandates these things.

We've all had enough drivel and distraction from publishers. We've all experienced the jolt of music from one parish to another. But we are Catholic, universal, and desire communion with as many fellow travelers as possible. The Church has laid out a plan, but most church musicians (and pastors!) don't know about it due in part to the distraction of new music overload.

Bullseye, MaryAnn Carr Wilson!

Do we stop composing new music for the Church? No! We must immerse ourselves in the tradition that has gone on before, and if our muse is truly in tune with the Holy Spirit and we are seeking to compose music worthy of the liturgy, magic WILL happen and we might find ourselves contributing to the store of sacred music that will be timeless.

Adam has done a very good thing! Is the SEP just a transitional resource to get us back on the path (authentic GC)? Maybe. Time will only tell. It might wind up being something the Church holds high in the future in ways we may never know. Then again, it could just be a flash in the pan. There is no way to know. However, it does point us in the direction of chant and not hymns. THAT is very valuable! I don't know Chris' work, is there a way to see it? He is coming here in six months to visit our parish. Maybe he will bring his music with him.

We need more Hildegard's that span throughout our history... don't you think?

And I am all for the emergence of every 21st century Palestrina who can give a new twist to the not too old art of spectacular polyphonic composition. There can NEVER be too much good polyphony! I think we all agree on that one.

My hat goes off to ANY composer who aspires to be a composer of sacred music. Too many of them are chasing after the silver screen or the concert hall these days.

Awww...
Speaking of "Big name composers" like Nyman, Corigliano, etc... It's not the direction we should be looking. IMHO, the greatest living American composer is John Adams. YMMV, but in any objective measure, he's in the top 10. But he's not a SACRED composer, and I think he would have to completely revamp his style to become one. El Nino is an embarrassment (esp. the video), a rehash of things past composers did better. I don't think the world would allow a composer to rise to that level and stay publicly devout. Who is the Tim Tebow of the arts? Yes, there was Messiaen, but people tended to ignore his faith as a quaint anachronism. The great composers haven't been the sacred composers since the Baroque. There were Mozart and Haydn, but their sacrality is a matter of dispute. And Bruckner and Gounod, both slightly off-tradition. And Rheinberger, possibly the greatest 19th-c sacred composer, who certainly was a somebody in his own time but is out of the canon of Western Art Music now.

I've heard some chamber music by my esteemed colleague Dr. LaRocca, and he's playing a different game now in his sacred work. It really is a different way of composing than most composers were raised in.

I'm in this very late. I do what I do, and it will stick or won't. But the future belongs to young cats like Daniel Knaggs.

JQ, you identified the problem: practically all the contemporary composers named are simply not sacred composers (or should I say sacred music composers?) or at least are not primarily so by a long shot - some have offered up a few works, some hardly any, if at all.

For example, Whitacre, whose music I highly respect and love, seems to eschew composing sacred music - the closest thing being "Lux Aurumque" which is a translation into Latin of a short English poem by Edward Esch ("Light / warm and heavy / as pure gold / and the angels sing softly / to the newborn babe.), so perhaps it's religious, but some would question whether it is sacred. Lauridsen made a killing with his "O magnum mysterium" but how many other choral works of his do people know? It's difficult for a Polish composer such as Gorecki or Penderecki not to compose sacred music, but the fame of the better known of these composers rests largely on concert works, most of them instrumental. And so it goes...

Who are the good composers who are known primarily for their sacred/religious compositions?

I agree about Pärt, although I'm not sure just how widely accepted he is (I've heard of some people not being able to get into his music). On the other hand, I recall someone who thought all of Handel's music was trash when compared with the music of Bach. I suppose that then flies in the face of the contention that sacred music is supposed to have a universal appeal?

Whoa there, FK, that there scattergun o' yers' barrel is a-smokin'!
Inhale slow, through the nose, out the mouth, repeat five times.
Ah, Grasshoppa, much betta now.

There's nothing "wrong" about reducing some folks' names to a word association or Rorschach exercize, if one treats it as the game that it is. But knowing you as the intensely dedicated Christian soul you truly are, Francis, I don't think you'd be all that comfortable being on the other side of that coin. I've always begged us all, even if I've not followed my own advice, to debate the composition's merit, not the composer. And, as this thread's intent should remind us, we should use different lenses and tools (telescopes v. microscopes) for each of those works.
As Chuck mentioned the Poles, I wouldn't dismiss out of hand the "Khatchaturian notion" that the Polish-Catholic heritage of intense faithfulness had no direct influence or witness in their large works for the stage, minimalist....neo-Stravinkyist...whatever "school" one might consign their work to. I would refer us all back to the address Metropolitan Hilarion gave the Benjamin School/CUA students a couple of years back regarding this factor in the debate.
The two pieces of Whitacre and Lauridsen that Chuck also mentioned I've conducted when I was teaching. When we, as composers, stand afar and look at their bio's and catalogs, we can choose to make pronouncements about their religiosity or not. However, if you're the conductor (and think about all the implications of the word "conductor"), a singer, or an audience member, the composer's rep or rap sheet is totally irrelevant. And it ain't for nothing in my life back then to have conducted L's "O magnum.." in the critical presence of L's major patron, Paul Salamunovich. You don't mess with the Salamunovich, he knows from chant and sacred. He's forgotten more about chant to the tune of how much JMO has learned in his time on the planet. And it hardly benefits anyone to throw L or W's name into a basket named "Rutter" or "Lloyd-Webber" on so many levels. Again, I may not see any merit to Rutter's "For the beauty of the earth" in my bailywick, but I sure as heck won't discard his "Requiem" to the dustbin because of that. Add to that the reality that folks like Rutter, like MacMillan and likely hundreds of others (Clausen, Stroope, Libby Larsen, John Leavitt, Craig Courtney et al), have long histories of service as church choirmasters as well as scholastic/artistic writers.
I really don't want this to appear as a rant, Francis, or even a correction. But you asked a very interesting question of yourself: who "qualifies" as a composer of sacred music that you would uphold? Allow me to turn that question around on you- who doesn't? As an example, I mentioned Thomas Newman (of that famed family of film scorers.) His score for the HBO presentation of "Angels in America" (don't get hung up on the play or its content) is a magnum opus in my estimation of modern composition, and again, I almost weep everytime I hear it as I'm walking around with it on my iPhone at its sheer beauty. For me, it's truly inspired; by God, the Creator. It changes me for the better. I don't quite get the same feeling if I'm taking in Metallica's "Enter Sandman" or the Stone's "Sympathy for the Devil."
Right now I'm pretty immersed in one Jeff Ostrowski's Psalter for Year B. And to answer your question as put: JMO makes the cut. YMMV.

Charles:

No correction needed, or taken.

I am not speaking about any human here... just my take on their compositional technique and mastery... not their personal dedication to the Faith or their spirituality.

I guess I am looking for the heavyweights of Catholic Sacred Music to appear. I will have to look up the list of comps from those you mention-can you give me a list of the BEST top ten that you consider timeless comps? Ones that could become part of the permanent treasure of sacred music? At the level of Palestrina or Victoria or ...Bach?

My 20th Century stars were Stravinksy, Barber, Debussy, perhaps Rachmaninoff and Reger, Holst, Copeland, and maybe a couple of handful of others on this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_20th-century_classical_composers_by_birth_date

But from the list of those I mention, I consider them middle weights at best. Just my take. Of course my standards for finding the heavy weights are really based in the higher forms of polyphonic writing, so, there aren't many who I find fit that category these days. Kind of a lost art, don't you think?

I think music composition went downhill after the Renaissance and the Baroque for the most part. There are very few masters of the craft since then. Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn are definitely a hybrid of the emerging Romantic era, which dropped the ball on advancing sacred music IMHO.

JO does have a good handle on the chant form, I must say that! Bravo JO!!!! At some point I do hope to have much more time immersing myself in that art...

There was a composer that Curtis put up here a few months back (in one of his recordings) that actually blew my mind... was highly contrapuntal and demonstrated an incredible facility for writing 21st century polyphonic music... can't remember who it was though.

BTW... I did a search for the word 'sacred' on that wiki list (above) and ONLY THREE were classified as composing such... what a tragedy!!!!!

"I do get tired of the sustained note-cluster school of sacred choral minimalism"
Don't even get me going...uh, too late. There's no emotion without motion, there's no motion without harmonic change, there's no harmonic change when there's nothing to change to because you're already there.

Liam:

Beethoven did not write higher forms of polyphony. He composed layers of homophony with extraneous melodies ala Mozart. da-da-da-daaaaaaa! Where did you get the impression I even LIKE Beethoven! The classical era is when sacred music started going over the cliff. (I don't even own his 5th) Learned to play it on piano once a long time ago just to see what was in it.

Sacred Choral minimalism comes from those who are trying to swim back to the island of authentic music through the experimental sea that swallowed them earlier in life.

Jeffrey:

Do I hear John Cage Catholic?

Is this the sadest thing you would ever want to see on your wiki page (as a composer)?

"Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, the three movements of which are performed without a single note being played. The content of the composition is meant to be perceived as the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed,[8] rather than merely as four minutes and 33 seconds of silence,[9] and the piece became one of the most controversial compositions of the 20th century."

Best known for producing nothing... now that's a statement!

Your comment is too much... Look at it this way... it might help.

You're already there when you arrive and you're never leaving!

Charles:

I do not look for 'moments of sheer brilliance' in music. It has to be brilliant from measure one all the way to the thick double bar at the very end. Otherwise, it belongs in the sketchbook. BTW... I like some of Arvo's work. I just think I would never perform it. His Te Deum is interesting and so is his Beatitudes. I think they could be categorized as severely advanced minimalism. Litany also kinda falls in this category, yes? Starting at 10:46, he writes a minor pedal all the way to the end to 22:58! That's 12 minutes of hanging around one chord with ornamentation.

Are you familiar with the music of the Liber Organi? Much of it is very simple to play, but most all of it is quite brilliant! Look at Martini's Elevazione... hint of romantic, but very well composed.

(returning AK47 back on the sling. ;() )

JQ, then we both misunderstood each other...
*I didn't link Barber to minimalism at all, that would be heresy. Anything by Barber drives a stake through the heart of Glass every day of the week.
*Your point about tension/resolution via voice movement is spot on; learned that big-time at 15 studying Miles Davis. However, I don't believe the issue centers around density of clusters, and how that obfuscates/obscures the power of voice movement.
*So, as always, "success" is determined by the expertise, craft and intent of the composer, one. And then the response of the performing and listening public. We could yak until the cows come home (sorry) about whether the clusters of Whitacre and Lauridsen (the Pacific contingent) disperse more profoundly and interestingly than does the North Sea contingent (Part/Taverner). To what end?
*That's why I cite both the ADAGIO and the more modest examples of Ostrowski's accompaniments: the melody in extremis motives in the Barber are more than complemented, they are achingly held up by single angels of specific harmonic pitches that shift very subtley as the melody moves to a terminus. To me, that's timelessness. And romantic in the truest sense.
*And my taste leans towards that romanticism because it includes "humanity" in the equation, a heart so to speak. So, I'll take Barber and antecedents like Alf Houkam and William Hawley any day over .... well, you know.
*Lastly, I'd like to mention that left out in the cold from this discussion are the harmonic marvels of the Balkan and neo-Orthodox traditions (Bulgarian State Women's Radio Choir!) Oi vey, incredible! (said with l'accent Francaise)

JQ said

Sure, that style evokes timelessness. But at my age, I'd like as much time as I can get. There'll be time enough to write "for the end of time" when God is giving out the commissions.

LOL

And I agree... Barber is very far from minimalism.

Charles:

I would LOVE to see your top ten of all time (20th Century Comps Sacred)

Worth noting in Colin's homepage:

Because, however, of his increasing dissatisfaction with the prevailing atonal style of composition, he returned composing tonal music in The Phoenix and the Turtle, a work written in response to a commission from Musica Viva for the 1974 Australian tour of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under Neville Marriner.

This work marked a lasting change of compositional style for Brumby, who said at the time, 'I became convinced that the atonal style of composition attempted to elevate gibberish to an art-form, and that I wanted no further part in it.'

Thank God, I never wasted time composing a single note in that nonsense.

Well, some of Messiaen is atonal (not a lot) but I don't recall hearing any Langlais or Britten that I would call atonal.

Messiaen really didn't write much sacred music.

I rather like Pierrot Lunaire, tho' I grant the approach might not work liturgically. Still, it would be fun to try, and perhaps the Propers would be a good place to begin.

It's a rather (in)famous piece by Schoenberg.

I daren't say too much, since I've been known to use a tone row and polytonality occasionally. However, I don't regard any of my works as atonal. I have also used octatonic modes at times.

Ian

i studied under jean ivey at the peabody and gordon cyr at Towson State U, both who were great advocates of atonal and experimental music. the peabody (at that time, in the 80's) had relegated music as a means to its own end. i was speaking to someone about this the other day. much of the 20th century experimental composition was a kind of turning into self. composers (at least at the peabody) created a vaccuum among their own kind. the beautiful art of music was reduced to a means of self expression and 'aural manipulative technique' and a Godless descent within that was void of meaning or any kind of reach beyond a pursuit of creating "sound on a timeline". that was the goal. this kind of turning in is a reflection of what unfolded in our society in general, and tragically foisted itself upon the liturgy. we saw this in the total rejection of all things traditional, the facing "inwards" of the priest towards the people, and an experimental attitude toward things sacred. anything goes. as the great platonic truth bears out, music precedes and shapes society. the madness of early 20th century music flowered into the grotesque, the fruit of which has matured into widespread sexual scandal and amorality which ultimately birthed the freaks of relativism and syncretism that pervade our society and our Church.

it has escaped me for my whole life... i cannot get used to bitter beer. have tried over the years. o well.

Francis, most of your comments on this thread seem to be saying, more or less, that every composer is inadequate, except you. That can't possibly be something you would would say, so I just wanted to mention that this is how you're coming across...

Well, it WAS a bad century for Catholic sacred music, overall; worse than the 18th or 19th c. (Not at all a bad century for ANGLICAN sacred music though). And those of us who studied composition in the '70s and '80s have our tales of trauma to tell. But it's always darkest just before the dawn.